How to stay in a place of gratitude when you are exhausted (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually)…
….

You can’t.

OK, get past that idea even though that feels real right now, and consider it.

Get up in the morning…. Nope. Not grateful for getting up when I’m that tired. Want to sleep. For two days. And then take a vacation. Next.

Feed the cats… yes. I love their little faces, their meows, their toes, their whiskers. I love the way they greet me like I’m the best thing on the planet, even if it’s mainly because I am filling their foodbowls. I love how they put their paws (but nothing more because no cats on counters) up on the edge of the granite top while standing on the barstool so they can be closer to the can and watch as I fill their bowls. I love how they rub their faces against me and meow piteously as if they haven’t been fed in weeks rather than hours. I love how they purr when the food is placed before them. I love how they look at me with big, trusting green and gold eyes filled with pleasure and loving me back. The cats. I am grateful for the cats each morning.

Clean the litterbox… and someone missed. Clean the floor, under the litter pan, the shoes it got on that happened to be beside it. Not as grateful for the cats.

Head downstairs to do yoga, meditate, and start work.

Want to head back upstairs and hit my bed again. Gratitude is eluding me.

My husband has made me tea. Because he knows I’ll like it. Yes, very grateful for him. Grateful for his love. For his support.

He has also left dishes in the sink to do because of the tea. How do you use five dishes to make one pot of tea? I have no idea. I clean them up — still grateful for him… mostly. Not grateful at all for the time it takes to do it. Or the fact they were left for me to do in the first place.

Force myself to do at least ten minutes of yoga stretches and five minutes of meditation and prayer. The yoga in and of itself becomes part of my meditation. Feeling resentful for taking even fifteen minutes from my work time to do this as the deadline is pressing on me, the one responsible for my exhaustion in the first place. I do it anyway.

Finding Gratitude

Gratitude for simply being alive begins to filter down into my senses as I stretch my muscles. For being healthy.

Gratitude for connecting to spirit and life and all that is begins to soak further into me as I sit and meditate.

Gratitude for the five minutes of nap time I just took fills me as my eyes pop open when my head jerks awake.

Frustration over the thirty minutes I now just let pass me by as I become fully conscious takes a knife and slays my gratitude.

Sigh.

I look around at all I have — my home, my garden, my husband, my cats – even the work I have to do – and remember that in this world I am in fact very lucky. I am blessed. And even though I am tired, I am, indeed, grateful.

Especially for the nap.

I slog on. And get to work.

With gratitude.